Raccoons can cause thousands of dollars worth of damage to your home if they access your house. Prevention is key for protecting your home, so you should always take measures to deter raccoons from taking up residence. Here are four habits you can use to protect your home from raccoons.

Take Pet Food Inside

If you have outdoor pets, you probably leave food and water outside so they can say satiated while out in your yard. Unfortunately, pet food that is left outside attracts raccoons. It is an easy source of food and water that keeps them returning until you remove it. Make it a habit to feed your pets inside if possible. If this isn’t a feasible task for you, try to feed your pets at specific times of day and remove leftover food immediately to keep from drawing raccoons to the area. Eliminating access to food is the easiest way to deter raccoons.

Seal Garbage Cans

Raccoons are notorious scavengers that tend to take up residence anywhere they can have easy access to food. One source of food on your property is your trash can. If raccoons can get inside your trash, they have easy access to discarded fruit, vegetables, pet kibble and other types of food. Once they find a source of food, they will not willingly leave it behind. They will continue returning to the area until you eliminate the food source. Sealing your garbage cans with a secure lock or placing a heavy item on top of the trash can lid keeps raccoons from getting inside.

Prevent Climbing

The most common way raccoons enter homes is through the roof. If you can prevent raccoons from accessing your roof, you could drastically reduce the risk of one of the animals getting into your house. It’s a good idea to remove trees that are close to your house and have low branches that hang near your roof. By removing trees, you can prevent raccoons from climbing onto your roof easily. You should also get rid of any vines and shrubbery that raccoons could climb to get inside your house.

Secure Bird Feeders

Bird feeders serve as an easy source of food for raccoons. If you don’t take measures to secure the bird feeders on your property, you will likely find the food gone every morning when you wake up because a raccoon has raided it during the night. Because raccoons are omnivores, they eat many different types of food, and bird food is no exception. You can keep raccoons away from bird feeders by limiting the amount of bird seed you put in them or putting lids on top of them.

Call Experts for Help

When your best efforts to deter raccoons from entering your home have failed, it’s best to turn to a professional for help. Skedaddle Humane Wildlife Control has a staff of experts who have years of experience in raccoon removal. Not only will we help you figure out how the animals got into your home in the first place, but we will also get them out of your house and relocate them to a better environment. Let us help you with humane raccoon removal so that you do not cause any harm to the creatures and don’t risk catching an infectious disease yourself.

Make an Appointment for Raccoon Removal

When you have raccoons in your home or damaging your property, you need to have them removed immediately. It’s never a good idea to tackle raccoon control on your own, so trust the experts at Skedaddle Humane Wildlife Control to help you. Contact us today for help with wildlife control in Vaughan.